"Waazzzaaaapppppp!!!????"

January 18, 2001 5:41 PM

"Waazzzaaaapppppp!!!????" chortles a jubilant Ricky Martin, as the president-elect prepares to thoroughly shake America's Bon-Bon.
posted by Hankins (27 comments total)

Good job Ashcroft wasn't around to remind Ricky that he will burn in hell for his sins. (If his music weren't enough.)
posted by holgate at 5:45 PM on January 18, 2001

Actually he was. He told Martin to go back to MEXICO! Where he belongs! And get a beard! Ohh yea, I could totally see this thread spawning inteligent conversation. *sigh* I'm just thinking of retiring for the evening. See what you made me do?
posted by tiaka at 5:48 PM on January 18, 2001

And:

More seriously, Bush said he found it ``deeply humbling'' to realize he would soon hold the same office as Lincoln, one of America's most revered presidents.

Too. Fucking. Right.
posted by holgate at 5:50 PM on January 18, 2001

tiaka: He told Martin to go back to MEXICO! Where he belongs!

um, ricky martin is puerto rican. unless you're implying that ashcroft would have him change his nationality...
posted by pnevares at 7:05 PM on January 18, 2001

I think he was implying aschroft wouldn't get it right.
posted by evad at 7:27 PM on January 18, 2001

evad got it right. A lot of college kids go by this place and always yell to the workers at McDonalds - 'Go back to MEXICO where you belong!' there are different version of this though. Someone once yelled at me - 'Go back to San Francisco where you belong, you FAG!'. I was making a joke of a of a presumed opinion of Ashcroft.
posted by tiaka at 8:00 PM on January 18, 2001

Props to Ricky Martin for being one of the few Hollywood/celebrity types who is not afraid to think for himself, and is not afraid of Big Entertainment's unspoken threats to blackball him if he does not immediately repudiate Bush's entire existence.
posted by aaron at 8:04 PM on January 18, 2001

Glad you heard those unspoken threats. Geez, they sure have done a good job at blackballing Arnold, Clint, and Moses his own self.
posted by dhartung at 9:28 PM on January 18, 2001

the picture reminds me a little of this one.
posted by lagado at 9:34 PM on January 18, 2001

Wow, three out of ... thousands. Execeptions, rule, etc. There have been plenty of published reports over the years quoting anonymous Hollywood players who say that they're forced to publicly toe the liberal line if they don't want to risk their careers. There's also been more than one statistical study showing that it's literally impossible for a non-self selecting group such as the entertainment industry to be slanted 99% towards a single political party. There's no way that many famous stars can all truly think the same politically.
posted by aaron at 10:18 PM on January 18, 2001

And Arnold and Clint are such big stars that they're immune.
And Moses pretty much spends all his time on NRA stuff these days.
posted by aaron at 10:20 PM on January 18, 2001

Um...aaron,

Not to state the obvious, but Senor Martin's career has been over for the better part of a year. He's got nothing much to lose by shakin' his one-hit havin', flash in the pan booty for the new boss. It's hard to get blackballed from an industry that has already stopped taking your calls.

Ricky's people know that his best shot for the next decade is to ingratiate himself to aging, upper-middle class women. That way, he can get a few weeks a year at the Mel Torme Memorial Theatre in Branson. That, and maybe the occasional headliner gig at a mob wedding.

After that, lay low for a few years, and then it's "All Aboard", for the nostalgia fair gravy train.

La Vida Loca, indeed.
posted by Optamystic at 1:00 AM on January 19, 2001

Aaron: There's nothing preternatural about Hollywood gravitating towards the left. Artists, open and expressive by their very nature, are more inclined towards liberal leanings. And there are only a few exceptions (Clint, Arnold, Moses -- and you forgot to mention Sly and Bruce) that deviate from this quite natural propensity.

I'd be curious to read these so-called "published reports over the years" that you have failed to link to.
posted by ed at 1:05 AM on January 19, 2001

Hollywood's still getting over the shame of the McCarthy era. I think about a century of penitential liberalism should do it.
posted by holgate at 4:51 AM on January 19, 2001

Tom Selleck's another with right leanings, though he's not quite a star these days I guess. Still, he and Rosie O'Donnell almost came to blows over gun control on live television once... didn't see it myself.

I'm not sure I buy that "artists, open and expressive by their very nature, are more inclined toward liberal leanings." Do we really want to go so far as to say that liberalism is the natural choice of those with talent? If you're an artist and not liberal, maybe you're not really as talented as you think you are? Frankly, it sounds like a great tactic for keeping the non-liberal artists in line through peer pressure, which is what I suspect is really happening.
posted by kindall at 7:55 AM on January 19, 2001

Redockulous! Why would political ideology have anything to do with talent? The unspoken assumption here is that the liberal wing is the one that thinks in new ways and explores new venues, which I don't buy. Libertarians are purty dang radical, if you ask me (which you don't, probably,) and there's a lot less of those in hollywood than greens (well, I'd assume so, since I'm currently ideologically outraged ;)
posted by sonofsamiam at 8:16 AM on January 19, 2001

Flame on ricky. heh.
posted by brian at 8:27 AM on January 19, 2001

Kelsey Grammar and David Hyde Pierce are also Republicans that have been known to attend social gatherings of such. Mahoney is left though. I have no idea where Jane Leeves is at. heh.
posted by tiaka at 8:54 AM on January 19, 2001

Aaron, I'm still waiting for proof that Republican-leaning celebrities get "blackballed" in your words.
posted by dhartung at 9:38 AM on January 19, 2001

Kindall: I don't think it's such a conspiratorial issue. However, Tom Selleck, Arnold, Sly and Bruce aren't exactly known to the world as, shall we say, gut-wrenching Method actors (and, yes, I'm counting Bruce's pre-Moonlighting work and "The Sixth Sense"). Of the remainder left on the list, Grammar and Hyde Pierce are probably the most talented, Clint is a master of the one-note enigmatic stare (and with "The Unforgiven" on his C.V., a better director) and Moses is entertaining in an over-the-top way (and, to his credit, he did get Orson Welles a job directing "Touch of Evil" and he was leading civil rights marches before he did a political 180 with the NRA).

Steven Seagal is the most notably leftist action star. But that still doesn't make his movies any more watchable. So if we're suggesting that talent is dictated by a liberal bent, there are always exceptions to the rule. :)


posted by ed at 10:45 AM on January 19, 2001

I'm not even sure it matters too much: look at the fact that tiaka and I agree on Kubrick, if not that much else ;)

The idea that actors' opinions should matter at all baffles me: the greatest performers of our era have, in general, been the most inscrutable. (Gielgud and Guinness, for instance.)

Gah. My complaint about last night's festivities is that it came across as a litany of the bland. Andrew Lloyd Webber. Jessica Simpson. Ricky "Target Demo" Martin. Charlotte Church, in all her money-grabbing-innocent nauseousness. Not that a Gore party would have been any better. In fact, it represents the campaigns perfectly.
posted by holgate at 6:09 PM on January 19, 2001

Oh, as Salon points out, there ain't gonna be no goddam poets there either.
posted by holgate at 6:59 PM on January 19, 2001

Holgate, don't you remember Gore’s concession night party? That looked like a good time. But yea, expect homogenized, sanitized blandness from the White House for awhile.

Aaron, I don’t know how often you’ve actually worked in the entertainment business, but I find really hard to believe during a pitch meeting for the Producer to ask a Director for his DLC Membership Certificate.

And Hollywood, for one, is self-selecting. There is a very obvious formula one follows to get jobs there.

“Liberal Artists”:
Raygun was a unionizer while he “acted.” He went on to gain the presidency using populist rhetoric and proceeded to fire unionizers left and right. The penultimate in hypocrisy, right behind corporate owned “independent media.”

Some of the best artists I can think of are strict anarchists or apolitical, while I can't think of one genre-bending conservative in the world.


posted by capt.crackpipe at 7:24 PM on January 19, 2001

Not even Nuge?
posted by netbros at 9:06 PM on January 19, 2001

Holgate, don't you remember Gore's concession night party? That looked like a good time.

Wasn't that becausee Jon Bon Jovi (ahem) decided that things needed a bit of spark and called all his mates round?

Anyway. Bush Mk I was paradoxically good for music, in general. So let's hope that something's stirring now.
posted by holgate at 4:00 AM on January 20, 2001

(Ed on Heston): he was leading civil rights marches before he did a political 180 with the NRA

Civil rights, gun rights... seems consistent to me. What I wanna know is, where's the organization to defend my third amendment rights?
posted by Jart at 7:19 AM on January 20, 2001

Anyway. Bush Mk I was paradoxically good for music, in general. So let's hope that something's stirring now.

It was the Lee Atwater influence. :P

Hey, good band name, The Lee Atwater Influence.

posted by rodii at 8:35 PM on January 20, 2001